Entorhinal Cortex: Where We Stand Now?

Hippocampus and the medial temporal lobe are involved in the formation of new, long term, declarative memories and navigation. Navigation in animals builds on a distributed, modularly functioning and organized large brain network. The exact computations and neural connections that underlie the hippocampal processing are still not well understood. The entorhinal cortex (EC) is the major source of input for the hippocampus. It has two distinct and functional processing streams into the hippocampus. Hippocampus receives its primary cortical input from the medial and lateral EC. On the other hand, EC receives input from other cortical areas such as perirhinal cortex and parahippocampal gyrus. So, EC is a small but important interface between the hippocampus and neocortex. The aim of this review is to summarize the anatomy, histology and connections of the EC, present the results of recent researches and point out new challenges on the hippocampal formation and EC.